(Press-News.org) Milan, Italy, August 11, 2011 – Memory is not a single process but is made up of several sub-processes relying on different areas of the brain. Episodic memory, the ability to remember specific events such as what you did yesterday, is known to be vulnerable to brain damage involving the hippocampus. The question is, what happens when damage to the hippocampus occurs very early in life? In a case study published in the September 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, clinical neuropsychologists have reported that a child can develop normally despite severe damage to the hippocampus resulting from lack of oxygen in the first days of life. This supports the theory that the different aspects of memory rely on distinct areas of the brain.
Dr. Claire Bindschaedler and Dr. Claire Peter-Favre from the Neuropsychology Unit of Lausanne's University Hospital in Switzerland, together with their colleagues Prof. Philippe Maeder, Dr. Thérèse Hirsbrunner and Prof. Stephanie Clarke, investigated the case of a patient known as VJ, one of the few cases of developmental amnesia reported in the scientific literature. Repeated neuropsychological testing showed that VJ cannot remember being read a story or shown a picture half an hour earlier, or at least remembers little of it. At the same time however, VJ does do well on tests of general knowledge, also called semantic memory. In fact, when tested regularly over his childhood and teenage years, VJ was found to develop at the same rate as other children in areas of general knowledge and general intelligence.
Analysing MRI scans of VJ's brain, Dr. Philippe Maeder found very severe atrophy (wasting away of brain tissue) in the hippocampi, while the adjacent area of the brain, known as the perirhinal cortex, was relatively spared from damage. This latter area is hypothesised to be important for the acquisition of semantic memory. These findings lend support to the idea that episodic memory (but not semantic memory) depends on the hippocampus.
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Notes to editors
The article is "Growing up with bilateral hippocampal atrophy: From childhood to teenage" by Claire Bindschaedler, Claire Peter-Favre, Philippe Maeder, Thérèse Hirsbrunner, Stephanie Clarke, and appears in Cortex, Volume 47, Issue 8 (September 2011), published by Elsevier in Italy. Full text of the article featured above is available to members of the media upon request. Please contact the Elsevier press office, newsroom@elsevier.com. To schedule an interview, contact Dr. Claire Bindschaedler, Claire.Bindschaedler@chuv.ch.
About Cortex
Cortex is an international journal devoted to the study of cognition and of the relationship between the nervous system and mental processes, particularly as these are reflected in the behaviour of patients with acquired brain lesions, normal volunteers, children with typical and atypical development, and in the activation of brain regions and systems as recorded by functional neuroimaging techniques. It was founded in 1964 by Ennio De Renzi. The Editor-in-Chief of Cortex is Sergio Della Sala, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. Fax: 0131 6513230, e-mail: cortex@ed.ac.uk. Cortex is available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00109452
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
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